man-x86 wrote:

I also did the same the day before, but with a saw and a file.

Nice 😀

I used an old solder iron to melt the plastic.

Ahh! Messy!

Small hobby hacksaw and jewellers screwdriver to clean it up makes for nice cavities on the side of the Dallas...

FuzzyLogic wrote:

I probably should create a dedicated post for this, but modems seem to get a lot of hate here.

I don't get why people hate on modems, it's no less useless than a PC-XT or something like that to be frank.

Neat! I have a couple external modems around the house, a USRobotics Speedster 56k and some no name 33.6 job that came in an "Internet in a box" kit.

Bancho wrote:

Finally managed to find a case for my Super Socket 7 Build. Its an Enlight 7237. Always loved this case and managed to save it from being scrapped. They front is yellowed so will try and retrobright it to bring it back to white but otherwise case is in fantastic condition.

That case looks extremely familiar. I think I have one or two sitting in storage.

The NT box is now up, however now I gotta get drivers, networking and the service packs loaded. I think the proper sequence is the networking, then the drivers and then apply all service packs to update everything. Biggest problem so far however is that while I can see machines on the LAN at a pin and telnet level, I can't "see" systems like my server where most of the drivers are stored nor can I apparently connect to the internet to download more drivers.

Someone from a BIOS modding community sent me one for the 775i65g r3 with updated microcode. But the E7600 still doesn't want to work in it. The E7300 still does.

Got me an SB1040 X-Fi Xtreme PCI-E. Not really retro, but I needed a dedicated sound card for my main rig since it kept BSODing. F#(%ing windows 10. The on board realtek card's win10 drivers kept causing a "attempted switch from dpc" BSOD. Removing realtek software means loosing the equalizer function witch I quite like - but it still cause a "kmode exception not handled" BSOD. Disabling it completely and installing the SB1040 seems to have done the trick...

Annoyingly, creative (in their usual manner) don't provide the full sw package for this card under windows 10, so I had to use 3rd party modded drivers to get the Equalizer to work, but the system seems stable now. The card also defaults to 16bit 48000hz audio witch sound like crap - extremely flat, no depth whatsoever, and any eq modification caused my speakers to buzz like crazy. I only noticed this by chance while reinstalling the on board realtek card to compare output quality.

By default, the realtek card sounds a lot better - richer sound, full bass - and of course it would - it defaults to 24bit 48000hz payback vs the 16 bit output of the sb1040. Setting the x-fi to 24 bit 96000hz fixed the issue. Still not as much bass on my 2.0 monitors as the realtek, but output is alot crisper, especially in the mid-high range.

Not really retro, I know, but hardware related nevertheless..

Re-capped the MS-9121 dual socket 604 board from Intellistation Z Pro with dual Xeon 3.06 GHz, fired up nicely. Removed the ATI Rage XL miniPCI card from the slot (motherboard has miniPCI slot) and replaced the VGA card with Intel 2915 a/b/g wifi. Will see how it works though it is very useful if it does.

Also put together Asus P4P800 SE system with Asus CT-479 adapter and Pentium M 750. Set it to 13x200 (2.6 GHz) in the BIOS and it is 100% stable with stock vCore. Graphics is AGP 7600GT 256MB. Installed XP onto it, will play with it later.

Finally got around to testing my SC-55 - I got a proper MIDI cable today (surprised at how long it took me to find one), connected it to the YMF724 on my K6-3 build and fired it up in DOS - awesome sauce! Now it's time for bed 😀

Swapped in my replacement XG-DLS board. Redid all my bios settings. Bios version is 1008 so it's not recognizing my 700Mhz 1MB P3 Xeons, but I'm too lazy to update it. They appear to be running at the proper speed according to my jumper settings and are reporting correct speed of 784Mhz at 112Mhz FSB so I'll get around to attaching a floppy drive and flashing the board at some point.

Preliminary testing seems to indicate the rig is stable, which means it's time for me to learn how to replace capacitors. My original XG-DLS board's gonna get some fresh new electrolytics.

Hell, maybe I'll be able to push the Xeons a bit higher with a freshly recapped board. I'd need to use SoftFSB or something else to do it, but hey. Why not. If I can make it to 850 Mhz I'd be satisfied.

Edit: Apparently I need to update my bios, XP is only reporting one proc in task manager. Pretty sure this is due to the bios not reporting processor correctly.

I'm dusting off that Power Mac 6500 my neighbors had for so long and did nothing with, and part of that was testing out the included QuickDraw 3D RAVE version of MechWarrior 2.

It performs horribly, even after turning all the settings down! It's like a bloody slideshow on the 6500's integrated ATI 3D Rage II! Come on, this is a BUNDLED GAME meant to show off a new system! Is this how S3 ViRGE owners felt about their 3D game bundles?

This simply won't do... but as luck would have it, that old Voodoo2 I had lying around works just fine in a Mac, no flashing needed. Drivers fit on a floppy quite easily, too, so getting stuff onto a machine without Ethernet, USB or FireWire at the moment becomes a cinch without having to burn a CD-R.

After disabling the ATI-related 3D extensions so the 3dfx ones can take over, it actually does work! But it's not the massive "GLQuake in 640x480" moment I was hoping for in terms of framerate, as if this system really needs a G3 upgrade to have any chance of running as smooth as I'm used to on my PCs.

I've also been faffing about in X-Wing and TIE Fighter a little. I'd play them more if I just had an ADB joystick right now, since the mouse controls leave a lot to be desired, but I'll have to wait a few more days for that. They look way better on Mac than on DOS, and you still get to keep iMUSE, albeit without any apparent external MIDI options for the MT-32 owners out there.

I repurposed an old server room humidity controller to serve a similar role in controlling the humidity in my meat dry-aging room. Does that qualify as retro activity? 😁

NamelessPlayer wrote:

..
I've also been faffing about in X-Wing and TIE Fighter a little. I'd play them more if I just had an ADB joystick right now, since the mouse controls leave a lot to be desired, but I'll have to wait a few more days for that. They look way better on Mac than on DOS, and you still get to keep iMUSE, albeit without any apparent external MIDI options for the MT-32 owners out there.

I didn't even realise that existed! Wikipedia says it's bundled with the collectors edition CDROM (which I have) but I didn't think it was, it should therefore be a bit better than the release, but equal to the SVGA graphics of the updated DOS version.

I'll check at some point as I have an OS 9 capable Powermac..

GOG installers work with KernelEx, but Galaxy doesn't. I've been using them to install games on my Win98 box. For DOS stuff, I delete all the DosBox executables and configuration and move the game to a folder with the rest of my DOS goodies.

Quake 2 engine games (including SiN) seem to crash the system in any OpenGL mode, saying that it can't allocate memory. This also destabilizes the system, causing other programs to fail allocating memory. Quake 1 and 3 engine games work just fine. I'm not really sure what the deal is.

Received a bunch of F/F, F/M and M/M jumper cables, which I'll be using to ghetto rig some internal audio connectors.

Before I left for work today, I turned my P233 MMX machine on to listen to some MIDI music through a Roland SC-55 mkII. 😀

I have to make a decision...

Either stick with the Tualeron 1.3GHz that's mounted on my half broken Slot-T adapter.

Or....

Open up a sealed Upgradeware Slot-T and use a 1400/512k Tualatin 😒

Guys help 😁

Specs:

Celeron 1300MHz
ASUS P2B-N Rev 1.04
512MB SDRAM PC100 CL2 (PC133 CL2 capable)
Voodoo 4 4500 PCI

Arctic wrote:

I have to make a decision... […]
Show full quote

I have to make a decision...

Either stick with the Tualeron 1.3GHz that's mounted on my half broken Slot-T adapter.

Or....

Open up a sealed Upgradeware Slot-T and use a 1400/512k Tualatin 😒

Guys help 😁

Faced with a choice between a Celeron 1300 and a P3 1400 I would always go with the P3. Not a great difference in clock speeds (approx 8%) but double the L2 cache.

Put an SB Live! CT4780 in my Tyan 440BX.

Arctic wrote:

http://voodooalert.de/board/wcf/images/photos/photo-561-85abcc67.jpg […]
Show full quote

I have to make a decision...

Either stick with the Tualeron 1.3GHz that's mounted on my half broken Slot-T adapter.

Or....

Open up a sealed Upgradeware Slot-T and use a 1400/512k Tualatin 😒

Guys help 😁

Specs:

Celeron 1300MHz
ASUS P2B-N
512MB SDRAM PC100 CL2 (PC133 CL2 capable)
Voodoo 4 4500 PCI

What rev is your P2B-N? Mine is early rev, goes only to 1.8v not lower and only can use Coppermines by modifying VID pins to 1.8v. Powerleap worked nicely but no POST at 133 MHz due to the missing 4th FSB jumper (which means PCI at 44.3 MHz).

It's 1.04.
I have a jumper setting for 133/33

I am still unsure. Maybe I should just use the P3 1100MHz 😒